(PART TWO)
…
Vera was crying.
She had held it in until Nick was out of sight, leaving them alone in the back of the car to wait for reinforcements form the palace that might never come. Wesley could still see the burning wreckage of the hotel they were supposed to have been at. Dark bitter smoke hung in the air, infiltrating into the car and turning the downtown street of Los Angeles into some kind of dystopian war movie set. Everyone had just vanished, and they could be the only ones left in the world. The air was punctuated by sirens and faint gunshots that made Wesley's heart pound so hard he could feel it in his forehead. And Elvira, lying pale and still on the bloody leather seat of the car, still alive but probably dying. That made his heart pound too.
It made Vera cry. Okay, so she wasn't actually sobbing or weeping, but she was definitely in the tear zone. She had tried to keep them in with deep shuddering breaths, but they kept squeaking out of her chest every few seconds until she was sniffling and wiping her eyes on her shoulder since she was the one keeping pressure where Elvira had been shot. He was close enough to her on the floor of the car that he could feel her trembling, her whole body. Except her hands. Her hands stayed steady.
"Hey, its gonna be okay. Nick will be here soon with like the entire palace guard," he said, trying to reassure her.
Vera nodded; the movement enthusiastic. He could see her swallow hard. "It's not okay," she said, her voice up a few pitches higher than normal. Her badass Viking eyeliner was smudged to raccoon eyes now, matching the blood smeared on her face with bangs hair sticking to it. Her dress was ripped up the skirt, her feet bare and bleeding because she would rather that than wear the heels that were somewhere in the street still.
"None of this is okay," she said again. "We won. It's supposed to be over. This isn't supposed to happen again," she kept shaking her head like that would stop this
It occurred to him that there may be some who had seen him like this. Ethan and Nicole, Lissa, his mom. Now he was on the receiving side and he had no clue what to do.
"Hey, its okay," he said, putting his hand on her bare shoulder. She flinched and Wesley pulled his hand away. "Everything is going to be okay; I promise." He was making a lot of promises lately, wasn't he? "I don't know what is going on, but I promise…" he didn't know what to promise. "I promise we're going to be fine."
"They're all dead," she whispered, her voice shaking. Wesley had to make sure Elvira was still breathing when she said that. Yep. How anyone could still be alive after losing that much blood he didn't know. His own face and neck were splattered with blood, and it was soaked down the front into his shirt and tuxedo jacket. Some of it was from the driver, who's body still was slumped in the front seat, but most of it was Elvira's. The worst part was that none of it was his, he was perfectly fine. Just like when Drake died.
"They're all dead and I can't do this again," Vera said, eyes wide as she stared down at all the blood. "I didn't even know her but-"
He didn't care if she pulled away, he put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her gently into his side. Vera let out a single stifled sob, fighting against it but it came out anyway. She leaned her head on his shoulder, her hands staying where they were.
"I was right there, just like today, when my best friend was killed right in front of me. It was almost the same thing; we were caught up in the riots in St. George and they recognized me because of my brother and she died in front of me because the gunmen missed their shots," Vera said, her voice thick with tears. She pulled away from Wesley, wiping at her nose. "I didn't even know how to shoot a gun back then. And now…I didn't even think when they shot her—" she nodded her chin at Elvira. "I just did it."
Another conversation, just a few days ago, on the roof of the palace. Sunset in her eyes, rosy cheeks with the fire gone out of her. Only it was the other way around. Wesley had been the one spilling his pain, finally telling someone what had happened.
"What was her name?" he asked gently, just like Lissa had done.
Vera looked at him, her bright blue eyes glassy. She lowered her gaze and pressed her lips together in some sad smile. "Montana. And there was Laura, too. And Caitlyn and Atlas, my sister and brother," she named her ghosts. "I lost everyone in one day. Well, except Laura. She didn't have to go through all of that. She died about a month before the Slaughter, in one of the first riots."
"You were in the Slaughter of St. George, then?" he asked, keeping his voice low.
Vera nodded, squeezing her eyes shut and making tears slip out of them. "Everything changed after that day."
It had been one of the worse days of the whole war, when the rebels of the province had attacked and killed their neighbors in the capital of Yellowknife for no reason other than rebellion. They had destroyed it afterwards, and hardly anyone in the capital had survived. One of them had, though, and she was sitting next to him on the floor of a car trying to keep it together as they waited for rescue that may never come.
"I couldn't save them. There was nothing I could do for Montana, she was dead before she even hit the ground. I don't know how Caitlyn and Atlas died; they were dead before I found them. I almost saved Carter. He was my first boyfriend and I really thought I was going to marry him," she smiled a wistful sort of smile. "I was only sixteen, but I loved him so much…He loved me, too," she looked down at her bloody hands and arms. "He died not twenty minutes after Montana, when the rebels started blowing up buildings. We were running and trying to get away and I was crying so hard I couldn't even breathe. We stopped and he was hugging me and I was trying to tell him that I needed to go find my siblings, but they were getting closer and closer and they were after me from the beginning to try to use me against Luke. Carter tried to protect me, but they just shot him and took me. "He wouldn't even recognize me now," she spat bitterly. "If he was even still alive. It changes you. Killing a person. The first ones the hardest and then it gets easier until you don't feel anything and you're numb." She took a shuddering breath, and her voice broke. She turned pulled her hands away from Elvira's still form and cracked open the door by her. Her body heaved and she puked onto the curb, crying as she was sick.
"Hey, it's okay." Wesley grabbed some of her hair back and rubbed her back with the other hand. "It's going to be okay."
When her puking subsided, Vera sat back, wiping her mouth and pushing away her hair with her bloody hands. She pulled the door closed. "It's just all too much. Too much death. This feels so much like that day, I just…I'm sorry you have to see me like this."
"Hey, you're lucky it's not me crying in the fetal position," he tried to make her smile, but it didn't work. She probably needed space. He dug around until he found the water bottle he spilled when the bomb had exploded in the first place and gave it to her. After a while, Vera took a deep breath and leaned forward, back to putting pressure on Elvira's gunshot wound.
"My parents…" Vera started, exhaling. Wesley remembered her saying on the Report that they had died early on in the war. "They were rebels. I just thought you should know," she said, swallowing back her tears. "None of us were though, me and my siblings," she added quickly. "I was like, twelve when it all started. We didn't know enough back then and my parents both saw Mitch Levi as some sort of savior. I hated that he had taken your family away into exile. I hated him. That girl that they added during your brother's Selection, Ebony? I loved her. I wanted to be like her."
"She was pretty cool, in the end." Wesley murmured. No one really knew what happened when they were in exile, and he wasn't about to let it get out. Ebony had redeemed herself and died doing it and that was all that mattered.
"My parents both died on the same day. There was a resistance movement in St. George, they started off independent, but they merged with the regular army later. My oldest brother, Luke, he was part of it from the beginning. Anyway, did you ever hear about the battle in the north of Hudson? The one right on the Denbeigh border."
"Yeah, the one on the lake? That insane one?"
Vera shrugged. "I guess. It's the furthest south the rebels ever got. It was on Lake Winnipeg."
Wesley nodded. "I heard about that. I was in Columbia, learning how to fly while I was on General Connelly's staff. That one dude saved a ton of civilians then."
One of the tactics of the rebel armies had been to attack civilians, especially those in the provinces still in Illea, which Hudson was one of. At first, the combined forces of Atlin and St. George had seemed unstoppable, marching south with swiftness. They had been pushed back into Ottaro after that battle.
Vera lips turned upward in a faint smile. "That one dude," she repeated. "That was Luke. My brother. After that they always called him the Angel of Saints."
"Wait, what? That guy was your brother?"
Vera nodded her lips pressed together. "Yep."
"Wow. I had no idea," Wesley shook his head. "Why did you never say anything? He's practically famous."
"He's famous for killing a lot of people, is all. Some people just used him as a face to inspire the rest of us to keep on killing and killing," her voice was hard. "That's all he knows anymore. But the thing is, that day he was part of the force that attacked the company our parents were in." She shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe he killed them, maybe he didn't. He doesn't know. Or at least he doesn't say so."
Wesley didn't say anything.
"I hate him," Vera said. Her voice was like steel, her eyes unblinking. It was silent now; the sirens had stopped a while ago and he realized the gunshots had too. It was just them. "Everyone always wants to talk about how great he was, but he wasn't. He was terrible." Her eyes stayed fixed on the back window of the car; her blue eyes icy. Her voice choked only a little as she continued. "Savior of the north, war hero, beloved patriot," she stopped. "I hate him. He got me kidnapped after the Slaughter. For six months I was held hostage and tortured until I broke myself out. I kept thinking he would come and save me, but he never did. Now he just drinks his life away, trying to forget everything he's ever done."
"I didn't know that," Wesley whispered, almost afraid to speak.
"Yeah, well," Vera said. "I don't really talk about it." She said it like it didn't matter, but Wesley knew it did. "After I broke out, I almost died in the middle of nowhere until a group of soldiers from the Illean army found them and took me back to base. After that I joined up. I couldn't just stand back and let the rebels kill us all. I had to kill some of them too. It never ends." She looked down at Elvira. "Even now."
They both heard it at the same time. It was hard not to, the series of gunshot was so close. It was followed by a shattering of glass and the silence was interrupted by a blaring car alarm that sounded like it was right in front of them. The guard's car now abandoned. Now with its front windshield blown out.
Wesley's blood charged and he swore his heart skipped at least five beats and he was going to have heart failure one day before the age of twenty-five probably.
For the first time since they had barricaded themselves into to back of the car, Vera let go of keeping compression on Elvira's abdomen, her frantic bloodstained hands skittering on the floor to grab the gun she had taken from Elvira.
"Sounds like snipers," she muttered. "And they knew which car was from the palace-"
As if to prove her point, the glass from their already cracked windshield exploded. Wesley and Vera threw themselves to the floor, hands over their heads. His exposed hands stung and yeah, he was going to lose his hearing too before he was twenty-five. He heard more gunshots, faint throbs in his ringing ears, then nothing. Damn, it really was gone, and he was only twenty-one. Then he heard Vera shift underneath him and realized it was just quiet again.
"Don't move," she hissed in his ear, only a few inches away from him. She was curled into a tiny ball, and there was glass in her hair. She reached for his hand, her fingers bloodstained and sticky and cold. But he squeezed it anyway. If he was going to die, at least he wouldn't be alone. With everything that she had told in however long they had been hiding in here and the two of them staring at their imminent deaths, he felt closer to Vera than any of the other girls. Her hand holding his was steady, holding his shaking one. She didn't even look scared. Wesley searched her eyes for any sign of fear, but this girl just managed a smile at him.
If they somehow got out of this stupid car alive, he wanted to hug her so hard to try to put all her broken pieces back together. But something told him that Vera Montgomery didn't need him to put her broken pieces back. She was already doing it by herself.
An eternity passed with them cowering on the floor, his face mashed into the carpeting. He was too scared to move to see if Elvira was okay, so he just lay there, holding Vera's hand, wondering how he was going to die. He just hoped it would be quick.
The light on the windows was gray and dim with the fading light when Vera let go of his hand.
"I'm going to check," she whispered, sitting up and checking her gun. She peeked out the windows.
"Are you crazy?" Wesley whispered.
Vera shook her head. "I hate waiting. And I'm not going to let them take me again." She eased up the handle of the door on her side open where she had thrown up earlier. "Stay here."
He didn't even have a chance to protest before Vera slipped out the door and softly closed it, immediately crouching by the wheel, her gun held at eye level. She was gone a long time. Wesley stayed exactly where he was after he located the gun Nick had given him, ears straining for the inevitable gunshot.
He shuddered. It was too similar. Stuck in a car instead of in snow, couldn't see out of the windows instead of through the fog. Smoke. There was always smoke when bad things happened, and people always got hurt and ended up dying. His other best friend was dying or dead. She wasn't going to come save him like she had before. In fact, if possible, she looked even paler now. He sat up slowly and when his head didn't explode by a sniper, he scooted closer to Elvira. Her mouth was open slightly, and even her lips seemed bleached of color, except now there was blood stained on her teeth. Yeah, that was not good. It was too quiet and Wesley could hear the thick rasp of her breathing.
"Elvs?" he whispered, squeezing her hand. He resumed Vera's post, holding the bloodstained blazer against her side. He decided it was too saturated so he switched it with his own jacket, wishing he could do more. "I promise you're going to be fine."
His words echoed hollowly in his ears, the same thing he had said to Vera when Nick had first left them. He really had to stop making promises. It wasn't going to be fine. He had already lost one of his friends and now he was losing the other. He was always going to wake up in the middle of the night or time was going to stop when he panicked or was scared and he was always going to find himself back here and his brain was always going to mangle Elvira's body in his memories just like it mangled Drake's to horror. And he was always going to remember making this promise he couldn't keep.
There was a gentle pressure on his hand and hope flooded through him. Elvira's eyes opened, just a crack.
"Elvira? Can you hear me?" he said like it would do any good.
She winced and swallowed several times before she spoke in a grating whisper. "Where's your security detail?"
Of course, that would be the first thing she would ask about.
"They went to get help, I guess. They said here would be the safest place for us."
Elvira tried to move, but her face tightened, and her eyes closed, and she lay still. She coughed a little, and Wesley could see more blood on her teeth before she swallowed it away. She tried to speak but coughed again. Wesley scooted to the mini fridge installed under the seats in all the palace cars and got her a water bottle. He lifted up her head and held it to her lips so she could drink a little but coughed again and the water went everywhere. He finally got her some using the cap and then she laid her head back, breathing shallowly. There was blood on her lips now, some on her chin. His stomach tightened and he squeezed her hand harder.
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice rasping. "I'm sorry I didn't take it more seriously. I should have turned the car around the second we got the report. I thought everything was all over."
"No no no, Elvira, no. You couldn't have known. Just, lie still, okay? Don't move. You are the best bodyguard I could have asked for." He tried to smile at her.
Elvira groaned softly and he knew she had to be in incredible pain. Blood in her mouth probably meant she was bleeding internally too. This was not good. She closed her eyes and Wesley thought she was probably unconscious. He used his shirt sleeve to wipe some of the blood off her face.
"I didn't say goodbye," she breathed, so quietly he wasn't sure if she said anything at all.
"It's okay," Wesley said, not knowing what she meant.
Her eyelids flickered but didn't open.
"You were with him, at least. I gave the order. I didn't even tell him," she said, her voice choked and awful and half conscious.
"Hey, it's okay," Wesley brushed her hair off her forehead, not knowing what to do or what she was talking about. "Just try to rest. They'll be back soon."
"Drake," she whispered. "I didn't tell him."
"What?" Wesley wasn't expecting to hear her talk about his friend. Sure, Drake and Elvira were friends too, but…wait.
Elvira didn't explain, but there was moisture sparkling in her eyelashes. They didn't quite turn into tears, but he saw them all the same.
Promise me you'll tell that girl, the one that you always talk about when you're completely trashed and then get embarrassed about when I ask you about her. Promise me you'll tell her that you love her and do something about it because I know you do. I never told her. I was too embarrassed, and she was so…I never told her.
That's what Drake had said, the nice part his dumb brain never seemed to want him to remember. That's what he had said, his voice choked and awful and half-conscious as he lay dying in front of Wesley, blood frozen all over the snow and staining his teeth and lips and mouth with no one but useless old Wesley who's fault it was he was dying in the first place. The last thing he ever said.
Elvira squeezed his hand, her grip weak.
The door behind him, the one against the curb, opened and Wesley tried to turn around on his knees and fumble for his gun at the same time and that failure was probably the only reason he didn't shoot Vera.
"Hey, it's me," she threw her hands up, and Wesley relaxed. "It's me." There were four guards plus Nick behind her and Wesley had never been so happy to see them.
"Oh thank God," he said. "She's dying. She's dying and I don't know what to do and…"
And neither of them had got to say goodbye.
"Your Highness, we need to get you out of here," Nick stepped forward. "We had to find the sniper before we came to you. But it's clear, the area's been checked. The streets are too clogged to get a car to you, but we have one waiting a block away."
"What about Elvira?" Wesley asked, climbing out of the car. He still felt like he was about to be killed any second and his chest was so tight he could barely breathe. Nick grabbed his arm, and two guards surrounded him. The other two were unfolding a stretcher.
"You're our first priority, and those are direct orders from the king. But we're going to get her out of here too."
"Her first. I'm fine, she's-"
"Captain Entrinken is our second priority and I promise she'll be two minutes behind you."
Wesley sighed but followed him. Nick seemed like the type of guy who could actually keep his promises and Wesley had made a couple today he was going to need help with.
Vera, with her dress ripped practically in half and tied together and bunched up by her knees, stayed with Elvira and the guards. Wesley looked behind him, but Nick kept hustling him along, passing several other guards with massive guns patrolling the area.
When they finally got to the other street, one that was clear of abandoned cars, the area was swarmed with civilians, some wounded, some so still he was sure they were dead. Police were everywhere and it looked like Andrew had called out the army there were so many uniformed guards and officers. Wesley didn't have a chance to ogle, he was practically shoved into another car (the exact same model as the one they had been stuck in for he didn't know how long." Nick jumped into the front and the car sped out of Angeles at a highly illegal speed.
"What about Vera and Elvira?"
"They'll be right behind us; I promise, Your Highness. We're taking Captain Entrinken directly to the hospital." Nick said, his hand clenched on the door handle. "She's going straight into surgery so no, you won't be able to see her until after and it's going to take time. Besides the king has ordered us to bring you back to the palace and you don't outrank him."
Wesley leaned back into the seat and closed his eyes, trying to get his heart to stop racing. Yep, definitely lost a few years of his life today. "Hey, can you be my personal bodyguard from now on?" he asked Nick, and the burly guard smiled from the front seat. "If you want, I mean. Otherwise I'm going to make sure you get promoted as high as you can."
…